leading and learning

This blog is a great opportunity to share ideas about ways to
transform schooling as we know it, to help all students realise their
talents, passions and dreams. Be great to hear from anyone out there! Feel free to add a comment to Bruce's Blog and enter e-mail to receive postings

‘Unfortunately,
in reading Visible Learning and subsequent work by Hattie and his
team, anybody who is knowledgeable in statistical analysis is quickly
disillusioned. Why? Because data cannot be collected in any which way nor
analysed or interpreted in any which way either. Yet, this summarises the New
Zealander’s actual methodology. To believe Hattie is to have a blind spot in
one’s critical thinking when assessing scientific rigour. To promote his work
is to unfortunately fall into the promotion of pseudoscience.’

Five
Ways To Shift Teaching Practice So Students Feel Less Math Anxious

‘Rather
than focusing on the algorithms and procedures that make mathematics feel like
a lock-step

Jo Boaler

process — with one right way of solving problems — Boaler
encourages teachers to embrace the visual aspects of math. She encourages
teachers to ask students to grapple with open-ended problems, to share ideas
and to see math as a creative endeavor. She works with students every summer
and says that when students are in a math environment that doesn’t focus on
performance, speed, procedures, and right and wrong answers they thrive. They
even begin to change their perceptions of whether they can or can’t do math.’

‘Why
do some children who learn to read earlier than their peers do so poorly in
ways that matter later on? Why do children for whom every aspect of their
education, from kindergarten onward, is tailored toward graduating from college
often struggle to graduate from college?’

‘This
clearly is a corollary of the point that children learn because they are
motivated to do the things they see others do. They are, of course,
motivated to do whole things, not pieces abstracted out of the whole. They
are motivated to speak meaningful sentences, not phonemes. Nobody speaks
phonemes. They are motivated to read interesting stories, not memorize
grapheme-phoneme relationships or be drilled on sight words.’

Creative teaching:Learning from the past - John Cunningham
teacher 1970s

‘

Diversity and creativity 1970

John wrote “It was the students themselves who effected
the changing nature of the classrooms and I had to accept the children as who
they are than what I wanted them to be”. Those who visited John's classroom
could not but be impressed with the quality of students work on display and of
the way they were able to work independently.’

‘Education, at its most engaging, is performance art. From
the moment a teacher steps into the classroom, students look to him or her to
set the tone and course of study for everyone, from the most enthusiastic to
the most apathetic students. Even teachers

Teller - all about magic

who have moved away from the
traditional lecture format, toward more learner autonomy-supportive approaches
such as project-based and peer-to-peer learning, still need to engage students
in the process, and serve as a vital conduit between learner and subject
matter.’

‘Before she started speaking, I was skeptical because I
have seen the idea of “personalized” learning happening in many schools where a
student jumped on a computer and based on the information they share, the
technology creates a pathway for that student. Although the technology is
impressive, it doesn’t mean that it is good. Seeing a student completely
zone out in front of a screen and letting the computer lead the learning is not
where I hope education is moving.’

Giving school students access to iPads, laptops or
e-books in the classroom appears to hurt their learning, new research has
found.However, putting this technology in the hands of a teacher
is associated with more positive results.’

Focusing on these five qualities of thriving classrooms can
help foster confident young mathematicians.

'

As a math consultant, I’m in many classrooms, and I get
to witness lots of math instruction. I find that there are similar qualities
among the classrooms that are really thriving—and those qualities quite often
don’t really have much to do with math. There are five non-math qualities I see
in the best-run classrooms.’

(USA): Today’s young children are working more, but they’re
learning less.

Until recently, school-readiness skills weren’t high on
anyone’s agenda, nor was the idea that the youngest learners might be
disqualified from moving on to a subsequent stage. But now that kindergarten
serves as a gatekeeper, not a welcome mat, to elementary school, concerns about
school preparedness kick in earlier and earlier. A child who’s supposed to read
by the end of kindergarten had better be getting ready in preschool.’

‘The answer is for principals and schools to work to share
their expertise and insights and to

develop a group consciousness able to stand
up to outside pressures.There will need to be courageous individual principals
prepared to start the collaborative ball rolling. I can see problems with so
called ‘successful schools’, or the competitive, ‘look at me' schools, wanting
to share, and as well schools who are struggling ‘owning up ‘and agreeing to
being helped. But, if someone starts the ball rolling then, as Dean Fink
writes, schools can, ‘shake off the shackles of conformity and compliance and
imagine and create.... do something. ‘So the answer to stress is to work with
others to ‘do something’ and to develop, what Fullan calls, ‘local creative
adaptability.’

“It is somewhat surprising that some educationalists have
only just picked up on this way of assessing learning, one used naturally in
the real world. The problem is that schools have been diverted from such an
understanding by believing in tests, written exams divorced from reality, and
an obsession with assessing atomised bits of learning. Such educationalists
have not been able to see the wood for the trees. It is exiting to read, in a
recent Ministry pamphlet 'Assessing Key Competencies' (written by Dr Rosemary
Hipkins), that one way to think of assessment is to consider the demonstration
of competency as a complex performance’.”

‘I
worked for a district who had the nicest SmartBoards and projectors around. I
liked them, they were easy to use, and they were only there a few years. But,
the darndest thing happened: the same year we took a forced pay freeze, the
district purchased new equipment – because if they didn’t they’d lose the
money. Socrates, one of the world’s greatest teachers, stood at a stone podium
and gave his students one question to discuss for the entire day. Just give me
the $5,000 it cost for that new tech equipment and let me be Socrates.’

‘At
the top of the list of the roadblocks are the piles of paperwork that
increasingly stand in the way of good teaching. The teachers starting out this
week didn't become teachers to fill in endless forms; they became teachers to
change lives.’

‘Yet,
school leaders and teachers scarcely talk about how to adopt a growth mindset
for themselves—one that assumes that educators, not only the students they
teach, can improve with support and practice. Many teachers find it hard to
imagine working in a school with a professional culture designed to cultivate
their development, rather than one in which their effectiveness is judged and
addressed with rewards and sanctions.’

A veteran teacher reflects on his quest to inspire intrinsic
motivation and curiosity in his students.

‘It
made me reflect over my career as an educator, and what kinds of impressions I
have left in the hearts and minds of the many students I have taught. I would
like to hope that the impressions I left were favorable, even memorable. One of
the impressions I hope to have left is that students had success in their
learning when they were in my class.’

‘Coleman
and Hattie work to control what counts and what matters—the ultimate in
politics—and thus are welcomed resources for those benefitting from inequity
and wishing to keep everyone’s gaze on anything except that inequity.'

‘Because imaginative thinking hones creativity and
improves students’ social and emotional skills, it’s something that teachers
and schools should fold into their planning. Ostroff identified several
strategies teachers can adopt to encourage older students to activate their
dormant imaginations.’

'I believe that implementing the following five things
would be a relatively easy way for any school to evolve so as to ensure
students are gaining the skills needed now (not 100 years ago) and in the
future. Whether you refer to them as the infuriatingly named "21st century
skills" such as collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking, or
simply as a way of genuinely fostering what the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC)
refer to as key competencies, particularly relating to others, managing self
and participating and contributing.' Claire Amos

‘Real and meaningful learning is a creative process.
Skills and knowledge cannot be downloaded like computer software, they must be
acquired, constructed and mastered– through long-term application and effort.Those who have studied successful skill mastery describe a
common process that is followed, one that requires practice, effort, patience,
experimentation and deep concentration.’

Dan Meyer, the most famous math teacher in America, wants to
radically change the way we learn math.

Imagine aliens have abducted you. They’re kind enough
creatures, however: Theirs is the slow-motion torture of trying to make you
understand them. They flash their strange alphabet at you and prompt you with
esoteric questions: Are you allowed to put this symbol here? To rearrange this
into that? At first you struggle. Soon enough, though, you start to see
patterns; eventually you begin to answer correctly.

This, Dan Meyer says, is how too many students experience
mathematics.’

‘Education is difficult in disadvantaged situations where
it is pretty obvious that the old ways are not working so it was great to read
about a school that seems to be beating the odds. The approaches they have
developed provide guidance for all schools but particularly middle and
secondary schools. And it is not that the ideas are even claimed to be new -
the school involved just had both the leadership and the courage to put them
into practice. Their approach is in opposition to the market driven imposed
reforms of the past decades.’

‘Too often personalized learning is missing; lost in all
the teacher imposed curriculum and assessment requirements; too much teacher
'delivery' of curriculums and not enough 'designing' personalised studies. One
idea to remedy this situation is to study the significant and personal
greatness of our student’s lives through biography. This could lead into, or
emerge out of, a study of the biography of famous people, or the recording of
the oral history of their parents, or of local people of interest.’

Friday, February 02, 2018

As we settle in to the post national standards era, it pays us to
be mindful that we need to make the most of this opportunity. For a start, it
could only take a change of government in 2020 for national standards to
reappear, along with the stifling restrictions on teachers and schools.

The recent news item featuring a Christchurch principal
complaining that schools now have no way to measure children’s progress is a
case in point. I have my suspicions that this was a set up by those opposed to
the current government’s education policies; however the warning is very clear.

Teachers need to make hay while the sun shines, to show how primary schooling
can be. The more the boundaries are pushed now, the harder it will be for a
future government to revert to the education desert of the past nine years.

Available NZCER

Seek inspiration and guidance from Bruce Hammonds and Kelvin
Smythe, and especially go back into the past to Elwyn Richardson and the other
great teachers of those enlightened years. The opportunity is here for the next
Elwyn Richardson to make his/her mark!

Kelvin Smythe is publishing a folder called ‘The File’
which includes a wide range of articles that explore what he terms ‘holistic
education.’ I recommend it to you. For further information contact Kelvin on
kelvin.smythe@mail.com

By
finding the positive, supportive, energetic teachers in your school and
sticking close to them, you can improve your job satisfaction more than with
any other strategy. And your chances of excelling in this field will skyrocket.
Just like a young seedling growing in a garden, thriving in your first year
depends largely on who you plant yourself next to.’

We
are born creative geniuses and the education system dumbs us down, according to
NASA scientists

‘The
scientists then gave the test to 1,600 children between the ages of 4 and 5.
What they found shocked them. This is a test that looks at the ability to come
up with new, different and innovative ideas to problems. What percentage of
those children do you think fell in the genius category of imagination? A full
98 percent!’

‘The sooner students develop an awareness of their
environment , and in the process learn to love and respect it, the sooner they
will see the need to sustain and protect it. As the future generation they will
need to see it as the number one world problem.’

The famous Nobel winning physicist Richard Feynman
understood the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of
something and it's one of the most important reasons for his success. In fact,
he created a formula for learning that ensured he understood something better than
everyone else.It's called the Feynman Technique and it will help you
learn anything faster and with greater understanding. Best of all, it's
incredibly easy to implement.’

‘The truth—for this parent and so many others—is this: Her
child has sacrificed her natural curiosity and love of learning at the altar of
achievement, and it’s our fault. Marianna’s parents, her teachers, society at
large—we are all implicated in this crime against learning. From her first day
of school, we pointed her toward that altar and trained her to measure her
progress by means of points, scores, and awards.’

'Too much control': Pasi Sahlberg on what Finland can
teach Australian schools

Pasi Sahlberg from Finland gives advice to Australia (applies
to NZ as well ?)

“Maybe the key for Australia is loosening up a little bit,
less top down control and a bit more professional autonomy for teachers,” he
says.Maybe the problem is that things
are tied up in a system that is not able to be flexible enough for teachers. “Maybe
there is not enough trust in Australia in good teachers.”

After 100 Years of the Same Teaching Model It’s Time to
Throw Out the Playbook

‘The transmission model of education is still the
name of the game, although in some circles there are signs of its erosion.

I would like to take you on a journey in this post,
starting from the 1950s banking model (Freire, 1968) of instructional design,
before comparing it to my own schooling experiences as a digital native at the
turn of the century. Then, finally, I would like to share my vision for C21
learning, and propose some ways that we can move forward so that we are meeting
the needs of today.’

'Because the first year in a new role is a whirlwind, it’s
easy to lose track of why you decided to take on the challenging role of
educator. It’s easy to get discouraged with the many tasks and the overall
state of being busy. I’ve learned to take time to center myself and remember
why I’m doing the work I’m doing. Some might do more formal mediation or even
reflective journaling.

Sometimes teachers take on so much work that they lose
their sense of purpose. Here are a few steps you can take to avoid that.’

‘When growth mindset was still a fairly new concept in the
education world, many teachers of gifted children saw its potential with that
population, who often feel they’ve gained a special status for being smart. It’s
not uncommon for gifted students to fear failure more than other students
because they feel they have more to lose.’

‘Creative teachers have always placed developing authentic
realistic and first hand experiences followed by creative expression through
the arts central to their programmes .Important to such teachers was the need
to provide opportunities to develop all the innate gifts and talents of their
students.’

‘To see changes sometimes you to have to stand back at a
distance and look for patterns. It is the same as with the difference between
the weather and a storm – when you are in the middle of a storm it is hard to
work out what is the weather pattern is. The same applies in education. Many
people think major educational changes started in 1986 with Tomorrow’s Schools.
This of course it not true. It was more just another nail in the coffin of
creative teachers.’

Cicadas

It is always the way. As soon as the summer holidays have past summer actually arrives.

Teachers and their students, who have up to now had little experience of real heat, are now feeling it, but now confined to their classrooms.

Let's hope teachers have decided to vacate their rooms and do their learning in the cool shade outside.

A chance to develop an awareness of the environment.

Teachers who have not forgotten that environmental literacy is as important as book literacy will no doubt be really enjoying themselves. The big issue of the coming decade is not a literacy crisis but a climatic one - environmental literacy

The sooner students develop an awareness of their environment , and in the process learn to love and respect it, the sooner they will see the need to sustain and protect it. As the future generation they will need to see it as the number one world problem.

If teachers do take their students outdoors they might begin to see that it is through rich sensory experiences that their students develop real insights and in the process expand them their all important vocabularies. They might even understand that in the beginning was not 'the word' but that in the beginning was 'the experience'.

Outside children can sit under a tree and let their minds go for a walk. They can be taught to educate their senses - each sense introducing information for their growing minds to process. Listening

bring in dimensions of sound, smelling will remind them forever of environmental experiences, touching opens the world of textures, and sight the world of movements, colours, and shapes.

Some teachers call this activity 'Going Solo' - space students out to avoid unnecessary interactions

The Simple Haiku ( three line poem)e.g. one thought about looking high above; one thought about something in front of you; and one thought looking down. Model the process in class , put a photo on the smart board or TV.

Encourage students to use their imaginations

Teachers who understand how brain grows will help their students expand on their ideas by

encouraging students to see connections, to use language metaphorically , or to get them to simply describe what they can see. Teachers who appreciate the power of observation will encourage their students to draw what they can observe - encouraging them to focus on something of particular interests. Digital cameras assist in this process by bringing images back into class to further process.

Fill the room with their thoughts, drawing and art.

In rooms ,with teachers who are environmentally aware, the evidence of students curiosity will be all around to see. There will be three line nature poems ( simple haiku), drawings , imaginative paintings, exciting phrases in their written language, and studies developing out of their reawakened curiosity.

By developing environmental awareness both teacher and students can learn to be co-explorers.

Take advantage of their digital devices

Have the students go for a work to collect photos of things that attract their attention. Back in class edit the photos down to five or six. Teachers could narrow the focus by setting a theme e.g textures and patterns, flowers, weed flowers, bark patterns, interesting angles ( geometry study)

Cicadas - a simple environmental lesson

So with this in mind this is an ideal time to go outside and listen to the cicadas. What questions come to mind - and what are your students prior ideas about cicadas?

t may be possible to uncover some nymphs before the emerge but possibly easier to capture some adults to observe/draw and to note differences between nymph cases and adults.

Students could then research answers to their questions. They might learn that many of their questions do not have real answers - not everything has been learnt about the 42 different types of New Zealand cicada! Do all cicada 'sing'? What is the point of all the 'singing'.

The New Zealand school year is about to begin, so Bruce Hammonds
and I are back again with our education readings. Hopefully New Zealand schools
are well prepared to make the most of the opportunities provided by the dumping
of national standards, although we have our concerns that too many principals
and teachers will struggle to break their mindsets free from the raising
achievement focused dictates of the the previous nine years.

‘By
relying less on data and more on teachers’ judgment, schools can give student
assessment greater meaning while also cutting workload.

Often
the focus is on what tracked data tells us about student progress, but I know
of no large-scale study that demonstrates the positive impact of data-tracking
systems on learning. My hunch is that you could delete all this data and the
students would never notice the difference in terms of the education they
receive. The majority of teachers have excellent knowledge of their students,
with or without the data.'

IXL: Caveat Emptor & Personalized Misery
NZ may have been saved from this by the change of government, but …

As
the computerized version of personalized [sic] learning continues to gather
steam, we can anticipate increasingly aggressive marketing. Remember – you
don't win in a free market by having the best product, but by having the most
effective marketing. Marketing for these algorithm-driven software packages of
mass-produced custom education belongs to a special class of marketing –
marketing that is designed to sell a product to people other than the actual
end users… Education has always suffered from this problem-- teachers get stuck
using products that are purchased by district administrators who will never have
to actually work with them.’

‘Every
child begins their journey through life with an incredible potential: a
creative mindset that approaches the world with curiosity, with questions, and
with a desire to learn about the world and themselves through play.

However,
this mindset is often eroded or even erased by conventional educational
practices when young children enter school.’

'A World of Difference': the philosophy of a Taranaki
pioneer creative teacher - Bill Guild

‘

Bill's room environment

In 2003 Bill Guild attended the Frankley Road 150th
Jubilee, a school he had been principal of for 28 years from 1959 to 1986. An
accomplished photographer,Bill complied a book ‘A World of Difference’ of the experiences
and creativity of the students he taught to share with past students attending.
Later an edited booklet was shared widely with teachers throughout New Zealand
who knew of the quality of teaching he was well known for. Maybe it’s time to
share his ideas again?’

Creative teaching:Learning from the past - John Cunningham
teacher 1970s

Creativity not conformity

Uncovering ideas worth sharing

‘The other day I was visiting my old friend John
Cunningham. He had been recently sorting through old notes ( John is a bit of a
hoarder) and had found some photos from his 1970 classroom and I suggested they
might make an interesting blog. In all areas of life we need to look
backwards to move into the future; ' Those who do not learn from history are
doomed to repeat it' (Santana).’

'If
we want students who are confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong
learners, how do we

maximise the beginning of the school year to ensure this
happens?We often use words such as ‘learning’ and ‘learner’ with our students,
yet how often do we stop and check that they understand what these words
actually mean? It seems to me that with a new year before us we have an
opportune time to unpack these concepts with our students. Learning-focused
relationships with and between students will not happen by accident; they need
to be nurtured through careful planning and design.’

I
am an occupational therapist with years of experience working with children,
parents, and teachers. I completely agree with this teacher’s message that our children
are getting worse and worse in many aspects. I hear the same consistent message
from every teacher I meet. Clearly, throughout my time as an Occupational
Therapist, I have seen and continue to see a decline in children’s social,
emotional, and academic functioning, as well as a sharp increase in learning
disabilities and other diagnoses.’

‘Primary
teachers sound excited after the sudden announcement of the dropping of
National Standards, and their New Year’s resolutions for teaching in 2018 are
about re-discovering the New Zealand Curriculum, and locally relevant learning.
They’re talking about passion-based projects, vision, and innovation; about
drones and gardens, marine reserves and whakapapa. The romance has been
re-ignited.’

Now that national standards have been dumped in the rubbish bin
of history, it’s timely to bring back Sir Ken Robinson.

‘And
the third part of this is that we’ve all agreed, nonetheless, on the
really extraordinary capacities that children have — their capacities for innovation… And
my contention is, all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty
ruthlessly. So I want to talk about education and I want to talk
about creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in
education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status… ‘

Who
should learn most about White Privilege—Māori children or Pākehā children?

Ann Milne:

‘Although,
internationally, there is a significant body of research on Whiteness and White
privilege (for example, see here, here, and here), in Aotearoa New
Zealand we have been largely silent about White spaces in our “Whitestream” schools.
The racist backdrop that is pervasive in our education system creates and
perpetuates the White spaces that marginalise and alienate our Māori learners,
yet it is a backdrop that we rarely name as being a problem.’

‘When
I started my career in teaching, I was encouraged to be creative and
experiment. I loved that freedom and I think it helped to make me a good
teacher. I got used to reading around my subject and trying out different
ideas. I made some mistakes, but I was always thinking, always learning, always
trying to do better with my students. I got good results. I enjoyed my work.
Contrast that with the situation I and many of my colleagues face today. My job
and so much of what happens in my classroom is being controlled and my teaching
hindered by excessive micromanagement.’

‘It is important if students are to become active learners
for them to tell their own stories, to pose their own questions and to make
their own interpretations of what they experience. If their ‘voices’ are not
recognised there will be many who will continue to disengage from their
learning.’